How Google Voice Can Help Landlords

So I’ve written before about how I use Google Voiceto mess with SasquatchWells Fargo. Well there’s an even better use for this great service and it has to do with record keeping. More and more these days some of my tenants feel the need to send me text messages for things like maintenance requests and general questions. Normally this would not work for me due to the fact that I would need to transcribe the text messages from my cell phone to some form of log so I could keep a record of the conversation. Read the rest of this entry »

So recently, I had a tenant who had just moved to the area and wanted a 6-month lease.Normally I don’t accept 6-month leases but she said she would pre-pay the entire lease including the security deposit and I accepted. A month before the lease came up for renewal, I spoke with the tenant about renewing and sounded very positive about signing a new 1-year lease. She even went so far as to request that I send the lease for her to sign.

The next phone message I got from her 2 days later, was that she had moved to another house with about 25 days left on her lease. Talk about flaky. I should also mention that she placed this call on a public holiday when she knew she wouldn’t have to talk to me directly. Now that’s what I call flaky AND cowardly. Read the rest of this entry »

This is one of a very few number of posts you will see here on Landlord-Success.com that is written from a tenant’s point-of-view. This post was inspired by a friend of mine (yes, landlords have friends too) who lives in Denver, Colorado.

This friend called me today to bemoan the fact that she’s, in her own words, “all jammed up” about a situation where she signed a lease and paid her deposit only to realize after the fact that her landlord and various associated employees are at the very least behaving in an unprofessional and demeaning manner while also not living up to their role as property managers.

Before she moved in, she was told that her unit would be painted, an appliance replaced and various plumbing issues would be repaired. Well, fast-forward two weeks to when the place full of boxes of her belongings, including all the headache that entails, and none of the above work was done. A call to the “property manager” was met by a person who behaved like the were doing my friend a favor by answering the phone. She was informed that she should be patient and that a maintenance person would be out to make the promised repairs. Read the rest of this entry »

While I was out getting some exercise one afternoon apparently two tenants living in a single rental property of mine, decided to break-up. Oh joy. The back story is that these tenants had just moved into town from another state. They have two kids between them and one on the way.

I returned to find no less than 12 missed phone calls from the two of them and upon listening to their messages, I understood that they were splitting up and they would like their pre-paid rent back. After speaking with both of them, I explained that they can get out of the lease but that there would be penalties. They would have to forfeit the security deposit and two months’ rent.

The gentleman of the house asked me during the phone call if I could come to the property and change the locks. I let him know that I would come to the property the next day even though I had no intention of changing the locks. Read the rest of this entry »

So a few years back I had a tenant break a lease and attempt to move out on the sly. They did this presumably because they had caused extensive damage to one of the bathrooms, which they did not report and then wrote a bad check for their last month’s rent.

They even left a very lame hand-written note apologizing for moving out and that they would pay their late fees in arrears, blah blah blah. Of course, the late fees never materialized and the tenant was never heard from again.

Well, as a matter of policy, if a tenant passes a bad check to me and tries to disappear I file a worthless check complaint with the local state attorney’s office. This is when the wheels of justice begin to grind and creek. Though they might turn slowly, they don’t stop turning.

A full 2 and a half years after the worthless check complaint was filed, I received a check from the county Clerk of Courts in the amount of $100. This is good because this tells me that the law has finally caught up with the tenant presumably at a traffic stop and my favorite, they went to jail unexpectedly.

What will be interesting, will be to see how long it takes the tenant to pay the other $700.